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Show Summary
In this episode of the Real Estate Pros podcast, host Q Edmonds interviews Nick Vignati, a buy-and-hold real estate investor. Nick shares his journey from starting a construction company during COVID to navigating the challenges of real estate investment. He emphasizes the importance of tenant relationships, overcoming adversity, and knowing one’s limits in the business. Nick also discusses his future goals for scaling his investments and the significance of building relationships in the real estate industry.
Resources and Links from this show:
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- Investor Fuel Real Estate Mastermind
- Investor Machine Real Estate Lead Generation
- Mike on Facebook
- Mike on Instagram
- Mike on LinkedIn
- The Outdoor Pros STL’s Website
- Nick Vignati’s Phone no.: (314) 315-3665
- The Outdoor Pros STL’s Email: [email protected]
- Nick Vignati on LinkedIn
- Nick Vignati on Instagram
Listen to the Audio Version of this Episode
Investor Fuel Show Transcript:
Nick Vignati (00:00)
There’s another thing off that tenant thing is ⁓ an old head told me, as he said, you can fix the house, you can’t fix the neighborhood. So that one stuck with me too. It’s like, you can go in and do as much as you want, but it doesn’t. So it’s kind of like when you’ve, I’ll give you an example on the one we just saw, Quentin. So.in an area with a lot of vacancy, right? A lot of crime, a lot of drugs, right?
Q Edmonds (02:00)
excited to be here today and have another fantastic guest. And I can’t wait just for him to talk about the uniqueness of what he does, right? How he can get to that cashflow opportunity and talk to you and give you some little nuggets of how he does that. And so I am excited to introduce you all to Mr. Vignati Mr. Nick, how you doing today, sir? Vignati. Here I go again, Nick, how you doing, man?Nick Vignati (02:28)
I’m good, man.Q Edmonds (02:31)
Good, man. Good, man. I’m so happy to have you here. And listen, Nick, let’s dive right in. Let’s get into it, man. I want you to tell people what your main focus is these days. I want you to give us a little bit of a origin story of kind how you got into real estate. And then, tell us what market you’re in, like where you are in the world. So Nick, you got the floor,Nick Vignati (02:58)
Awesome. Okay, so what do do? We are buy and hold real estate investors primarily. We are long term long term players in the game, right? So we don’t look to just get a quick dollar. We want to play the game and stack the equity and going hopefully generations. Origin story.I, from St. Louis, Missouri, born and raised, ⁓ grew up in downtown, working class, area right, got a few for my market, growing up in my market. ⁓ Went to college, obviously knew from day one that the, that whole world was open for me, and I really wanted to be an entrepreneur. So after college,
graduated during COVID, right? It was a little shaky, but everyone was house locked ⁓ because of COVID and because of mortgages. So we opened up a construction company, landscape construction, as well as other side construction company, mostly painting and drywall. That kind of took off, ⁓ started accumulating single family rental properties, ⁓ major hurdles in the beginning.
was not having the ability to obtain financing because I didn’t have any income, W-2, I didn’t have any history really. So, you know, my first five deals, Quentin, were all cash. yeah, so I mean, if you can imagine like just 12 to 16 months saving and just not having, you know, 100K in a deal, it’s like, my gosh, you know.
So yeah, and then that’s kind of where we’re at right now, Quen. So we’ve got, we sold off one rental. We’ve got four left. We sold off one of our bad eggs and then we just run the construction companies. And then hopefully this year, since we do have the ability to obtain financing now, we got financing on our first deal last year, ⁓ DSTR. So as you know, Quen, there’s no limit on those.
You can just keep doing them, keep doing them. So yeah, that’s kind of where we’re at.
Q Edmonds (06:18)
Love it, man. Nick, I appreciate you taking me through the journey, man, telling me how you got to where you are now, some of the strategies you put in place. And so listen, man, I have a saying where I say destiny has no wasted moments, right? Meaning no matter what we go through in life, it kind of make us who we are today. And so, man, I want to know when you got into real estate.What has destiny within real estate taught you about yourself? Has it taught you resilience, discipline? Like what has it taught you about you on this journey?
Nick Vignati (06:49)
Yeah, yeah, I would definitely say.The main thing that has taught me is to come from a place of service. And it’s like, you really have to make your tenants happy. In the buying whole game, that’s really all that matters is like, you’re almost like a long-term hotel in a way. You just wanna kind of make them happy, appease to them, make sure they’re comfortable.
So it’s really like you get into this thinking it’s more of a construction money game and it’s really ⁓ kind of a relationship people game when you get past all the construction and stuff. ⁓ And I think one of the, what stuck with me, I forgot who told me this, but it was one of my mentors. said,
the value of the property is only as good as the value of the tenant. So that really shaped my mind around like, you could have a million dollar house, but if you put a bad tenant in it, or if it’s a neighborhood full of bad tenants and million dollar houses, then all the houses aren’t worth a million dollars anymore, are they? They’re worth basically nothing. it’s just kind of like…
Looking for that long-term play, not the quick cash has really taught me a lot too because on paper a deal might look good, but then when you get into that neighborhood, when you get into that house, when you get into that tenant base, you’re like, this deal isn’t really making sense anymore, you know? Because so many variables, so much can happen in a deal like that. So yeah, it’s kind of what I’ve learned, yeah.
Q Edmonds (08:40)
Yeah.Now I love it, ⁓
Nick Vignati (08:48)
⁓Not all the glistens is gold.
Q Edmonds (08:53)
Ain’t that the truth, bro? Ain’t that the truth? All that glistens is gold, for sure, For sure. So, so it seems like, man, you’ve been in a business enough where you faced some adversity, right? And so I would love to know how have you overcame adversity within dealing with, you know, maybe deals not going the way you wanted to, maybe even getting into a place where you had a second guess, like, do I want to be here? So tell me, man, how have you ⁓ overcome adversity?Nick Vignati (09:22)
Yeah, for sure. So as far as the deal flow goes, Quentin that doesn’t bother me as much because I was always taught that there’ll always be another one next week or tomorrow, right? Stuff pops up on the MLS. So it’s like if they don’t like my price or my offer or maybe they get a better offer or it falls through, honestly,never lost sleep over that. If they found a better deal for them and if they, you know, it’s just whatever makes them happy, whatever, whatever works for them. You can’t be mad about somebody else getting a better deal than you had on the table. It’s just not, doesn’t make sense.
the deal flow thing is just kind of rolling with the punches. Now, as far as the, the adversity, I would say, you know,
There’s another thing off that tenant thing is ⁓ an old head told me, as he said, you can fix the house, you can’t fix the neighborhood. So that one stuck with me too. It’s like, you can go in and do as much as you want, but it doesn’t. So it’s kind of like when you’ve, I’ll give you an example on the one we just saw, Quentin. So.
in an area with a lot of vacancy, right? A lot of crime, a lot of drugs, right? ⁓
The unit behind us always has riff raff, right? The police get called, it’s a multifamily 16 plex, the alley’s filled with trash, right? So you go out there, you clean up the alley, the next month it’s dirty again. Then you’ve got a house behind you where they don’t do any landscaping, they don’t trim anything. the storm happens, the dead tree falls on their property, but it rips your meter box off of your property.
Just like everything around you is bringing you down, but you’re trying to better the community. But you it’s like you can’t because you don’t have enough capital. You don’t have enough money to change everything. So that’s where we just had to remove ourselves from that situation and say, look, we’ve been here for years. We can’t there’s nothing more we can do. ⁓ And it’s unfortunate, you know, because you think that the neighborhood is coming up and up and up.
but actually it went down, which no one really saw that coming. So yeah, that’s kind of like fighting adversity a little bit. and then like the house next door burned to the ground. I mean, it was just, yeah, man, it was just one of those where you can’t do anything. You just gotta leave the situation. And the guy who actually bought that property owns 300 units in that zip code.
And I was just like, man, I don’t know how you do it. Yeah.
Q Edmonds (12:57)
⁓ man, Nick bro, thank you for sharing man. Like I really love the fact that you kind of know kind of where your limit is, like where your boundary is, right? And like sometimes we don’t talk about boundaries within business. Like you had to put a boundary like, listen, after four years, my boundary is nothing, nothing. You may own what 30 whatever.This is my boundary. This is where I get off ship. And so I get it, man. And I think knowing yourself, knowing how you’re wired, what your capacity is, what your boundary is, is a smart move. Now let me ask you, Nick, what is your next goal? Like, what are you looking to solve or scale next? What’s the next goal for you?
Nick Vignati (13:40)
Yeah, so I think the next goal would be to do more than one deal per year. So we’ve kind of been stuck at that one deal per year mark. So I think setting up, implementing a plan to do two, three, four, five, six, and actually scaling the deal flow ⁓ would be the next step. ⁓And then also, you know, exploring my options because since I did the first five deals in cash, know, everything is 100 % equity. So do I want to go back and tap into that equity? Do I want to refinance? Do I want to get a HELOC? What line of credit, right? What’s the best option for me to still maintain that cash flow though?
Q Edmonds (14:36)
Yeah. So listen, last question, man, I want to ask you, I want to talk about relationships. You know, I love how you said, you want to serve people, right? I always say at the foundation of any sustainable business is servitude. If you keep servitude at the foundation serving people, you will be successful because you just put the seeds in the ground that you’re gonna reap on. And so, man, I want to know,about relationship building within what you do. Is it important? How do you go about building relationships? Talk to me a little bit about relationship building.
Nick Vignati (15:51)
relationship building in real estate is really simple. mean, when you go to these real estate meetups, I feel like everybody just wants everybody to win. And there’s a lot of positive mindset around that. ⁓ As far as real estate and construction kind of go hand in hand, it’s really justbeing there when people need you. So in construction and a lot of service based businesses, people are always three weeks, four weeks booked out. But if you can make a time slot for somebody to get them in sooner and kind of prioritize certain people that can get you certain places, that’s kind of what I would ⁓ tell people getting into the game. ⁓ If you’re like really fresh,
and you just kind of started, I would put like what my mentors told me to do is I would put a to-do list together of everything that you think a top dog broker or agent or property manager or whatever they need, come to them with a list and say, hey, I think you need these things. Can I do some of these for free? And then you would be surprised at where that could take you, right? ⁓
job offers or, and then also I would,
I would do favors for people just to learn. you really never know like that little five minute thing you did for that professional, that real estate professional, like five years, 10 years down the line, they would still remember that how you made them feel and ⁓ throw you a bone. Yeah.
Q Edmonds (17:47)
Yes, Man, you hitting the nail on the head, man. Old school quote Maya Angelou said is, people may not remember what you said, but they will remember how you made them feel.And so man, you are tapping into it. People don’t remember how you made them feel, man. So I love it, man. Nick, this is good, man. You’ve been dropping gems. If someone wanted to reach out to you, connect with you, collaborate with you, learn more about what you’re doing, how can they reach you, get in contact with you?
Nick Vignati (18:18)
Yeah, so you can call me at 314-315-3665. That’s my business phone number. That’s also my construction company phone number as well. ⁓ You can email us at [email protected]. You can visit our website, OutdoorProsSTL.com. You can reach out to us on Instagram.at @chef_boyardee or you can reach us out to our other Instagram @OutdoorProsSTL one word. ⁓
Q Edmonds (18:58)
Got it.Nick Vignati (18:59)
Yeah.Q Edmonds (19:01)
And listen, I appreciate you so much, Nick. I want to say three things to you, man. First, thank you for your time. Thank you for carving out time. Of course, time is our most precious commodity. So thank you for that. Two, thank you for your story, man. Thank you for telling your story. Thank you for telling your narrative. You have, I’m sure, some seeds that people can take away and imply their own life. And then lastly, man, thank you for your perspective, for your mindset, and bringing that mindset to this platform. I greatly appreciate you,Absolutely. No problem, man. So listen, y’all heard Nick. You got the value. You got the nuggets. Look in the show notes, check him out, but definitely make sure you subscribe here because I’m telling you, we’re going to continue to bring up amazing people just like Mr. Nick. So sir, thank you again and everyone else. We’ll see you on the next time.
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